1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a container for keeping food warm, moist and fresh. In particular, the present invention relates to an insulated food container designed to keep hot food warmer, more moist, and fresher for longer periods of time.
2. Description of Related Art
Food delivery or takeout food, e.g. fast food, has long been a mainstay within the United States. While most fast food or regular restaurants serve food within their restaurants, a great majority of them offer food to go or delivery of food. Since most fast food is a hot product, best served fresh out of the oven, keeping food warm and moist during delivery or on the drive home has been a difficult problem for decades.
For home delivery, ovens and reusable heavily insulated containers have frequently been utilized. However, for take home use, the container must be of a disposable kind and expensive products are clearly unsuitable. Typically, food is placed in a corrugated cardboard (e.g. as used in pizza boxes), Styrofoam, or other inexpensive material container. While the containers are very inexpensive and do a reasonable job handling moisture collection from hot food, it is not very good at retaining heat and moisture for a very long period of time. The corrugated cardboard or Styrofoam box does a good job in absorbing the moisture, however, it tends to dry out the food and makes it harder.
Several attempts to make a container that insulates better have been made, but mostly expensive solutions have been developed. Since the container must be included in the price of the food, anything that is difficult to make and/or uses expensive materials is unsuitable for a disposable container. Examples of unsuitable boxes include laminated multiple polymers, dual layers of corrugated cardboard with an insulating material certain types. These triple laminates, while an improvement in the heat retention, are too expensive to manufacture when compared to the single layer cardboard container which can be cut out of a flat sheet or stamped to a shape.
It is a need within the industry to have a container which holds heat longer than 10 minutes or so, and keeps the food moist and fresh, yet is inexpensive to manufacture and uses inexpensive materials. Since many companies that deliver food offer 30 minute hot delivery, attempting to keep a food warm for that period without a separate heat source or expensive reusable container would be desirable, but to date has not been achieved.